ILS diversity never been larger, market must continue expanding opportunities: Anger, Marsh Securities

The diversity and size of the ILS investor base has never been larger, according to Cory Anger, Managing Director at Marsh Securities, who believes that the market remains extremely healthy, while emphasising the need to continue expanding investment opportunities further.

Marsh Securities is the global capital and advisory unit within Marsh Re, that handles insurance-linked securities, catastrophe bonds, collateralized reinsurance, and private credit.

Speaking to us in a recent interview, Anger outlined what she believes are currently the biggest challenges within the ILS market.

“The lower growth rate in limit need from established (re)insurance market geographies as replacement cost inflation has lessened means that improved structural coverage has become more important. Covering multi-lines of reinsurance through whole account coverages, different types of coverage (e.g. offshore wind farms) and pioneering new ILS opportunities (e.g. casualty) is important to expanding the investment opportunities,” Anger said.

However, despite these challenges, the ILS market remains extremely healthy at this time, according to Anger, who emphasises that strong returns and investor interest continue to drive market health.

“The diversity and size of ILS investors has never been larger. The volatility in traditional capital markets investment alternatives continues to reaffirm the benefits of dedicating investment portfolios to ILS investments. While complexity of structures increases, the quality of the ILS structures and terms/conditions remains strong. Earnings from permitted investments in the ILS structures are contributing to overall healthy returns,” Anger explained.

As the industry begins to move into year-end renewal negotiations, Anger outlined that consistency and relevance are the key topics that ILS markets and alternative capital managers should be having in their meetings with investors and cedents during this important period.

“We’ve seen that the ILS markets have been willing to innovate at a more rapid rate than the traditional reinsurance market during the softening cycle and keep ILS growing. Consistency with sponsors in support through the underwriting cycle is also important. With the ongoing turbulence in the broader traditional capital markets asset classes, the performance of ILS continues to be reaffirmed,” Anger told Artemis.

In recent years, the ILS market has expanded its reach across emerging perils such as casualty, specialty, and cyber. Looking ahead, Anger outlined her expectations for where these emerging lines are heading next.

“We continue to see the market expand and deepen its support of new lines for ILS structures. We have not seen abatement in interest for casualty or whole account sidecars. However, we do see expansion of investors willing to support such opportunities without needing less liquid asset strategies (such as use of private credit investments).

“Because of rate softening in cyber and casualty, expanding business lines to broader coverage has helped maintain return targets that investors need to support such strategies,” Anger explained.

The conversation then turned towards artificial intelligence, which has become a key topic of discussion across much of the reinsurance and ILS markets in recent months, as the data centre build out continues to take shape.

Looking ahead, Anger expects 2027 to be a pivotal year for AI and its presence across the ILS market.

“Marsh Securities (along with the rest of Marsh) has been focused on how artificial intelligence can play a role in the industry and more specifically ILS. We led a panel on the topic at the ILS industry’s SIFMA conference in April 2026. As all industries lever and expand their use of AI, the infrastructure for pricing AI is at a critical juncture with (re)insurance capacity ever growing,” Anger told Artemis.

“ILS will be part of such solutions and discussed as insurance facilities and exchanges for data center insurance are being implemented. ILS investors are raising capital for these opportunities and we expect 2027 to be a pivotal year.”

To end, Anger shared how Marsh Securities aims to differentiate its business in order to attract investors and cedents throughout the rest of 2026 and into 2026

“Marsh Securities works collaboratively with our Marsh Re traditional broking teams to first understand our clients and placement strategies. A cohesive overall program design is critical to achieving best results than just achieving best execution on silo placements,” Anger said.

Concluding: “We have constantly led the market in designing novel ILS structures that have addressed our sponsors needs, and we expect to continue such strategies for the remainder of 2026 and 2027. It is critical to find a way to support clients’ needs in balanced placement approaches.”

Read all of our interviews with ILS market and reinsurance sector professionals here.